The invention relates to a self-contained strobe light assembly primarily adapted to be used in connection with warning lights on a vehicle. Certain utility vehicles, such as service and delivery vehicles, utilize flashing lights in connection with the operation of providing those services. For example, a postal vehicle, when making deliveries, may activate flashing yellow hazard lights to alert approaching drivers to use caution when nearing the delivery vehicle. Heretofore, the majority of vehicle flashers on such commercial vehicles have been provided with incandescent lamps as the source of illumination. When it is desired to turn on the vehicle's hazard lights, e.g., in a delivery situation, the driver of the vehicle merely switches the flashing hazard lamp circuit "ON" from within the vehicle's cab. In operation of such a typical 12VDC vehicular warning lamp circuit, a 12VDC electromechanical flasher relay is activated and alternately provides 12VDC power to flash each hazard lamp simultaneously. A utility vehicle may have multiple hazard lamps mounted upon its exterior, generally, as a minimum, two in the rear and two in the front. In some applications, hazard lamps may also be located on the sides of the vehicles.
One major disadvantage of using incandescent lighting for flashing hazard lamps is their relatively poor visibility under certain ambient conditions, such as in heavy fog. It has been shown that flashing strobe lamps provide significantly greater visibility than flashing incandescent lamps under such adverse conditions. For this reason, recent efforts have been undertaken to replace existing flashing incandescent hazard lamps with strobe light assemblies. Such strobe lamps are currently available in the art as a replacement for the original equipment incandescent lamp assemblies. However, this prior art strobe lamp assembly is both expensive and time consuming to install and may require undesirable physical alterations to be made to the vehicle.
These prior art strobe assemblies require high voltage wiring, nominally 360VDC, be routed from a remotely mounted DC to DC converter located within the vehicle to the strobe lamp housing, typically located at the front and on the rear of the vehicle, in order to supply high voltage to the strobe tube located within each of the lamp housings. In addition to the high voltage supply wiring, the prior art flash assembly also requires a third high voltage wire to be installed to supply a nominal 250VDC synchronized trigger pulse to the trigger transformer, also located within the lamp housing. This arrangement also requires that a separate, continuous 12VDC-power circuit be installed in parallel with the flasher circuit to supply voltage to the remote strobe power supply. The presence of these high voltage lines in an otherwise 12VDC system is another disadvantage of employing the strobe lamp assembly found in the art. Finally, the prior art provided no means for synchronizing the strobe flashes with the flashing of complementary flashing incandescent lamps.
There is a need for a synchronized strobe lamp assembly that is easily retrofitted in place of existing lamp housings, and that does not require high voltage wiring to be routed through a vehicle to the strobe assembly.